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Friday, 17 July 2009

The Bilderberg Group - Truth or Modern Conspiracy Theory Myth?

"I don't quite know why I'm on a flight to Athens, except that it seems like the right thing to do. I'm flying out on a last minute whim to hang around outside a conference which may, or may not, be happening and to which I've not been invited. None of you has……Unless, of course, the rumours are true. Unless, as a handful of people are saying, this weekend is Bilderberg. The yearly alignment of the distant stars that shape our destiny. A long weekend at a luxury hotel, where the world's elite get to shake hands, clink glasses, fine-tune their global agenda and squabble over who gets the best sun loungers. I'm guessing that Henry Kissinger brings his own, has it helicoptered in and guarded 24/7 by a CIA special ops team."

This is an extract from Charlie Skelton’s daily reports filed for The Guardian newspaper in May of this year. He is speaking about the infamous and clandestine global group Bilderberg and their annual meeting of the world’s illuminati this year in Greece. In fact the Bilderberg name comes from the hotel used by the group for their first meeting in 1954 - Hotel de Bilderberg, Oosterbeek, the Netherlands.

The group was founded by several people, including Denis Healey and Józef Retinger, who were concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe. The initial aims of the group were to further the understanding, growth and cultures of the United States of America and Europe. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from eleven countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with eleven American invitees.

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Jozef Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.

A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

The secrecy which the Bilderberg Group conduct the meetings and lack of reporters in attendance has spawned critics and conspiracy theories alike. According to the investigative journalist Chip Berlet, the origins of Bilderberger conspiracy theories can be traced to activist Phyllis Schlafly. In his 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:

"The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest."

Police detained guardian reporter, Charlie Skelton on three occasions while attempting to photograph attending guests at the meeting in Greece this year.

"I arrived last night, under cover of darkness. I told the cab driver to stop 50 metres from the hotel. He asked why. I couldn't tell him that it was so I could case the entrance for FBI lenses. I simply muttered that I couldn't explain. His eyes lit up. "Aha! I see! I know!" What did he know? And who is that following us? A man in a BMW. Definite spook."

According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt ‘mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.’

The initial aims of the group during the 1950’s may seem perfectly laudable in a time when the ghost of the second world war still stood at the shoulders of mankind and the battles of Korea and Vietnam were still to be fought. But now it reads like something off the pages of a Dan Brown novel. The real argument about conspiracy theories of ‘New World Orders’ and a clandestine ‘Masonic-styled’ global group of the world’s leading illuminati influencing world decision making begs the question – which came first? The conspiracy or the truth?

What is most unsettling is there is a global group of politicians, businessmen, religious leaders intelligencia influencing world decisions and policy making in many countries who are not elected representatives of those countries are instead driving their own hidden agenda.